So:
-All you need do is change the ASIN parameter in the file.
-You do not need to load the thumbnail or format the filename of the book itself to include the ASIN.
-You still likely need to clear old metadata if you sideloaded books before this ASIN change. I think this is what was stopping my Kindle from downloading information when I tried this before.
-The number you put in the ASIN field, as far as I can tell, must begin with a B. You cannot use an ISBN-10 or ISBN-13. I tried on one book, at least. So what that means is if you have a book that is not on Kindle yet (one book I have is an old Xanth novel that was scanned in that's not available in Kindle format yet, so it doesn't have an ASIN yet), you have to manually load the thumbnails, yourself.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have done many different things, and none of them have worked like you say.
1) Converting to mobi with Sharing turned on, then send to device in Calibre. Result: Cover shows, Personal shows
2) Converting to mobi with Sharing off, then send to device. Result: No cover, no Personal.
3) Converting to mobi with sharing on, then using MobiMetaEditor to add/change 113 to the ASIN number, then copying to PW. Result: No cover, no personal
4) Converting to mobi with sharing on, then using MobiMetaEditor to add/change 113 to the ASIN number and 501 to [EBOK], then copying to PW. Result: cover, personal

It must be that book. I tried a different book. One that I hadn't put on my Kindle, and it worked. I saw that maliciousloki said something about clearing old metadata? What is that?

Here are the steps I took.
1) Choose the book and select Convert books
2) Change output to Mobi.
3) Go to Mobi Output and make sure 'Personal Doc tag' is [EBOK]
4) Make sure Enable sharing is turned OFF
5) Click OK to convert the file.
6) Open the file using MobiMetaEditor
7) Change 113 (ASIN) to be the ASIN of the book from Amazon. (Preferably the Kindle Edition's ASIN)
8) Save the new mobi file and copy to Kindle.

At this point:
a) The books cover shows. (I'm not sure whether it's being loaded from Amazon or the embedded on in the book)!
b) The Personal tag does NOT show up!
c) Sharing works correctly. (Shared both to FB and Twitter)
d) X-Ray does NOT work. (At lease for the book I tried)

EDIT: e) You can also report content errors...whoops... They'll be looking for an error in a book from another publisher, lol.

(By the way, everyone, this automates the ASIN fix - YAY - but there's still an issue; the file, if transferred manually to the Kindle by Windows, shows the cover, but if transferred by Calibre, the cover does not show! Progress, but there's still something about Calibre interacting with a Paperwhite that doesn't let the two get along...)

I tried to this without success in the past but I may need to wipe my books before doing it since I was messing with the same book for a while. This would be the simplest flow I think.

I seem to have stumbled on a workaround that does not involve mucking with the metadata in my .mobi files. This solution will enable you to load your .mobi books onto the Paperwhite and have them show up categorized as books with full covers and NO "Personal" banner ruining your cover.

The only catch is that you have to be able to share your Calibre library on your local network so that you can access it via the "Experimental Browser" on the Paperwhite.

Here are the steps:

1. Enable "Sharing over the net" in Calibre preferences so that your Calibre library is available on your local network via any web browser.
2. Make sure your Paperwhite is connected via Wifi on your local network.
3. Go to the Home page of the Paperwhite, tap the little "Menu" icon in the upper right corner, and from the drop-down menu, tap "Experimental Browser."
4. In the URL box, type the URL to your shared Calibre library. (After the Calibre library page loads, you may also want to bookmark this page for future reference: tap the "Menu" icon in the upper right, and then tap "Bookmark this page.")
5. In the browser, find the book you want to load to your Paperwhite, and tap the .mobi format link. Confirm that you want to download the file, and then you'll get another confirmation box that the file downloaded. Just click OK.
6. Tap the Home icon in the upper left and your book should be in your Paperwhite library, with the full, non-generic cover intact, categorized as a Book, and with no "Personal" banner.

So far this has worked for me, but only with .mobi files. When I tried it with .azw3 files, it just showed the generic cover icon. No idea why this might be working, but I'm not complaining!

I realize that it's a lot slower downloading the books one-by-one than being able to sync a bunch of books directly via USB with Calibre, but it's worth it to me to get my full covers and to have the books show up as Books on the Paperwhite.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can get the same results with this method, as this would be a much simpler workaround than the complicated metadata editing suggested in other topics. But for now, it's working for me at least!

I believe that the way the mobi was created is still key to this working. Using your method avoids having to physically copy the mobi to the Kindle but other than that the mobi still needs to have the proper metadata I would think.

The way I understand what people have been writing is that it looks like Calibre is doing something (perhaps the way it copies covers to the /system/thumbnails directory?) when transferring books to the PW that is messing up the cover situation unless you mark the file for sharing. I would consider it a bug if copying (or using the web browser) the same file manually to the PW works and using Calibre does not. There should be a "please don't hose up my cover art" option when transferring

I seem to have stumbled on a workaround that does not involve mucking with the metadata in my .mobi files. This solution will enable you to load your .mobi books onto the Paperwhite and have them show up categorized as books with full covers and NO "Personal" banner ruining your cover.

At first I got the generic cover, but then I realized I hadn't done the conversion with "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." checked off, as discussed previously. When I reconverted the books, I could download them and the cover shows, but they have "personal" on them. I recall some discussion regarding wiping the PW's files so that no metadata that was previously recorded was saved. So I downloaded a book that I've never had on this PW, and the same thing happened - "Personal" banner.

I have no idea what you might be doing different from me. You had my hopes up, though!

EDITED TO ADD: I guess I should ask - did you convert the books with the "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." checked off, or no? To recap, when sideloading, if you don't check that off when converting, the book doesn't have the "personal" banner, but also doesn't have the cover. When that IS checked off, when sideloading books, covers work but books have the "Personal" banner. So far, I'm getting the same behavior when using the personal server method of transfer.

EDITED AGAIN: Well, blow me down. I just tried another book, that did NOT have "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." checked off, and it worked - cover yes, personal banner no. So I'm getting inconsistent results. But I do know that this book did NOT have "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." checked off.

I think I have somewhat figured out why I'm getting mixed results with kingbee's method. If the book came from Amazon, and I brought it in to Calibre only to "clean" it, and didn't convert it at all, then this method works - has covers, doesn't have "Personal" (and it is working for me for azw3). But if I converted it, either because it didn't have a good cover, or because it was ePub, then it doesn't work: if I converted it with "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." checked off, it says "personal". If I converted it without that checked off, covers don't show.

Also, I can confirm that this behavior is different from simply side-loading. An azw3 direct from Amazon (cleaned) sideloaded doesn't show cover; using the personal server does show the cover.

I have a couple of observations after also getting a few books that wouldn't give me the covers.

1. Do NOT check off "Enable sharing of book contents via facebook etc..." when converting to .mobi, or you will most certainly end up with the "Personal" banner.

2. I finally figured out that the books I was having trouble with were the ones for which I had downloaded metadata from sources other than Amazon. So here's what I did to solve this issue:

a) Edit the book's metadata in Calibre.
b) Click the "Configure download metadata" button, and choose ONLY to download metadata from Amazon under "Metadata Sources." Save your changes by clicking the "Apply" button.
c) Click the little Delete icon next to the "IDs" field in the main "Edit Metadata" window. This clears all the existing values from that field.
d) Click the "Download metadata" button, and save whatever metadata is pulled back from Amazon. Note that you do NOT need to save the cover that comes back from Amazon. What cover is in Calibre doesn't make a difference for "Cover view" books that don't have the "Personal" banner. (i.e. the "non personal docs" covers are pulled down from Amazon).
e) Try downloading the book onto your Paperwhite via the network. If all is well, then the cover should show up in "Cover view" with no "Personal" banner.

If it doesn't show up, try these things:

a) Make sure that before you search for metadata on Amazon's site, the title of your book is an EXACT match for the title of the Kindle book as it exists on the Amazon web site. If you're getting generic covers, then this is something to check. If the book doesn't exist as a Kindle book on the site, then as far as I can tell, there is no way to get a cover to show without the "Personal" banner attached, as "Cover view" on the Paperwhite pulls the cover images from Amazon based on the ASIN number (I noticed this because the cover that shows up in "Cover view" is sometimes different from the one I have in my Calibre metadata). Your only option then is to convert to .mobi with the "Enable sharing of book contents via Facebook" option selected, which will put the Personal banner over the cover.

b) If you've tried all the steps above for a book that exists in a Kindle edition on the Amazon site, and the covers still aren't there, then install the Quality Check third-party plugin, and right-click your book in Calibre's file list, and select Quality Check > Fix > Fix ASIN for Kindle Fire. (Link to Quality Check plugin: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=125428)

Hope this helps! I've now got about 95% of my covers showing up without the Personal banner -- all except those that don't exist as Kindle editions on Amazon's site.

Man, they really make you jump through some hoops for something so seemingly simple.

I, too, got this to work. I did have to go all the way down kingbee's steps, including Quality Check. I also had to be careful which book's metadata got pulled in step (d) above - sometimes there was more than one, and so after some strange results, I had the Amazon page open to double check that I pulled the right data (based on ISBN).

Ok, realized what was going wrong for me. You have to be out of airplane mode for the covers to come in since they are being downloaded from Amazon. Duh!

Note that I copied the mobi file to my documents directory via USB rather than using the network. I'll try to transfer the same files via Calibre to see if that really does trash the results. If it does, I suspect something is wrong in the cover copy. It would be nice if there was an option to NOT copy covers - I have googled and did not find such an option if it does exist.

EDIT: Another thought is that I use the option to rename my books on the fly to include series information when Calibre moves them to my Kindle. I would not be surprised if that is stepping on the AISN fix.

I had never used the Calibre server before. Worked fine on my work pc, not working on my home laptop. Any suggestions? I turned off my virus protection. Home pc is Windows 7 Home, work is 7 Pro. At work IP + /8080 worked. At home, PW says there was a problem loading this page.